Knowing Oneself

He who knows others is learned;
   He who knows himself is wise.
He who conquers others has power of muscles;
   He who conquers himself is strong.
He who is contented is rich.
   He who is determined has strength of will.
He who does not lose his center endures.
He who dies yet (his power) remains has long life. (Tao Te Ching, chapter 33, Lin Yu Tang trans.)

In earlier blogs, I discussed our true selves, immortal consciousnesses that incarnate into this physical plane. I have said that our purpose here is to gain energy and experience the physical plane.

Here, I want to expand on that. To explain why we are here and how that works.

As I said, our true selves take on a body and mind when they incarnate here. They use these “components” to make their way through the physical plane and to do what our true selves have come here to do.

I call our bodies and minds components because they are not us. Understanding this important fact is the first step on the path to knowledge. However, that will be the subject of another blog.

As I explain in my book Break Through To Your True Self, consciousnesses exist in the higher planes of existence in something like a dream state. They are formless and contain memories of their experiences in the physical plane. They can communicate with other consciousnesses. And as in dreams, they can instantly move from place to place. They have no wants or desires as we think of them.

Because of this, consciousnesses cannot experience things as they can in the physical plane.  The physical plane has density. It is thick and slow. Time exists here. It takes time to move and to get things done. Consciousnesses can experience that time in ways that are impossible in the pure spirit domains of the higher planes of existence. That is why this physical plane exists.

When we come here, our true selves inhabit (incarnate into) bodies. Walls, mountains, and other obstacles prevent us from passing through them as we can in the higher planes. Our true selves have experiences that take time to happen.

 So, If the consciousnesses have no desires, wants, or needs and come here to experience, how do they do that?

The answer is that they have a will. That will, moves our bodies and minds to act in ways that look like wants or desires, so much so that you can’t tell the difference by looking. In fact, to our bodies and minds, they are desires and wants. Our bodies crave food, sex, and other pleasures. Our minds crave everything from music and art to games, sports, politics, money, power, and many other things that are available on the physical plane.

They can also crave negative feelings or pain and addiction. While these experiences are generally thought of as being bad for us, our true selves make no such judgment. Yes, some of us come here to experience these pains and suffering.

Some of us come here and die young for any number of reasons. Again, to our minds, these are tragedies. To our true selves, they are just another experience to be gained while here.

These experiences, good and bad, help our true selves gain energy and advance to the higher planes of consciousness.

See, the primary purpose of coming here is for our consciousnesses to move to higher planes of existence. The astral plane is the first non-physical plane; it resides just above the physical plane. Most consciousnesses go here when the body dies, and we lack the power to advance to the next higher level.

That action is part of the reincarnation cycle, in which our true selves incarnate into the physical plane, live and die, and return to the astral plane, only to reincarnate back into the physical plane to do it all over again. We can reincarnate thousands of times over tens of thousands of years. Since the consciousnesses are immortal, it doesn’t matter how many times they return.

However, all consciousnesses eventually move to higher planes of existence. It is their nature to do so. As I said, to do that, they use the physical plane to gain energy. I’ll explain that in a minute. But I want to add that once the consciousnesses advance to the causal plane, the level above the astral plane, it does not have to reincarnate.

Now that you know why we are here, I’ll discuss how we gain the energy to advance. To gain energy from our experiences, our true selves set up the conditions for reincarnation to meet the circumstances that our true selves have chosen to experience.

We choose our parents and family history, our race, religion, and even our intelligence. We also choose the place where we were born. All this is arranged in the astral plane, usually in concert with other true selves who interact with us here. For example, it is possible to meet your spouse before incarnating. Again, these choices may be good or bad.

The problem is that when we do incarnate, the bodies and minds we take on act as cloaks to mask our true selves. Soon after we are born, our minds develop egos. They begin to think of themselves as “us.” Our true selves slip into the background, masked by the mind and body and all of their cravings, desires, and beliefs. They help create the experiences we have here.

Many of us, that is, our true selves, live out our existence here in that background. Our minds never know about our presence here. It does not matter because it is the experiences here that our true selves are seeking.

However, eventually, we gain enough energy to begin peeling back the cloak and coming to the forefront. We must do that because, to move to the next level, our true selves must be active to enable that leap.

At this point, we have enough energy to get on the path to knowledge. It may take one lifetime or a few before we become enlightened and have the power to will ourselves forward, but our true selves are patient.

You can learn more about the planes of existence in another blog post or read my book Break Through To Your True Self, which explains them in some detail.

Namaste,

Michael Tavella, author of

“Break Through To Your True Self”

Yourtrueself.blog